"I consider Reggae music fighting music. I believe the strong message of Reggae Music has the power to change people's minds and influence how they live. The tattoos on my body reflect my philosophy, faith and convictionl. I met an old Rastaman in Jamaica. He gave me a necklace of a lion and called me his Brother. It was so meaningful to me that I tattooed the map of Africa in the shape of lion on my chest." I have devoted my life to Reggae music". -Skull

Smoke or Fire is back after a tour of the world, a lineup change and months spent working on their sophomore full-length, This Sinking Ship. The band has always kept their fans alert over the years, but things are more concrete than ever for Smoke or Fire and their sound remains true. Clearly influenced by predecessors like Hot Water Music and Avail, these young upstarts also blend in some additional elements of Americana with their hints of The Replacements and Springsteen.

This Atlanta quartet nods to its arty post-punk inspirations - Joy Division, Echo & The Bunnymen, Remain In Light-era Talking Heads - and then fashions those influences into something fresh and novel. Likewise, video director David Plauger's inspired clip for Snowden's "Like Bullets" shares some of the evocative minimalism and stark electro-primitive beauty of the "Once In A Lifetime" video. In execution, though, it's completely modern. For starters, the "Like Bullets" video contains projections, but Plauger doesn't make use of a green-screen. Instead, he's dressed up a quartet of actors in black body-stockings, and these humans become the screens on which the footage of the band rolls.

But since the actors in the leotards don't move in the same way that the people in the footage do, there's a fascinating disconnect between viewer expectation and the images in the clip. Heads seem to turn at crazy angles, group members swap bodies, limbs and torsos ripple and warp. A soloing guitar appears on the chest of one actor; the face of another becomes the flat surface of a kick-drum struck by a foot-pedal. Finally, in a striking image straight from a sci-fi film, the heads of the four human-shaped screens explode - and the images of the musicians fall back, heads and shoulders slumping down the torsos of the actors' bodies.It's all unsettling and hypnotic, and further proof that the many of the best videos are built from simple ideas that are inexpensive to execute. That resourcefulness is characteristic of both Geoffrey Plauger's Refrigerator Art production company (Plauger also did the clip for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's "Over And Over Again") and Snowden themselves. You can check Snowden's tour schedule at http://www.snowden.info/

They've proved it onstage: Sohodolls has a well-deserved reputation for furious, chaotic, in-your-face live performances. Maya and her bandmates have taken their act all over Europe, shared bills for Daft Punk, The Charlatans, and The Magic Numbers, and even made a successful swing through California earlier this year. They'll close the summer and begin the autumn with a whirlwind U.K. tour; the Sohodolls will be playing somewhere in the British Isles almost every day. Ribbed Music For A Numb Generation, their soon-to-be-released debut album, captures the electronic anarchy - and the rough humour - of a Sohodolls show. Producers Robert Harder (Babyshambles, Sunshine Underground) and Steve Lyon (Depeche Mode, The Cure) have thickened and deepened the band's sound: they've kept the raw electroclash energy of the early singles, but added to it full rock-band dynamics. The result is already setting the London underground on fire; U.S. domination seems but a heartbeat away.

Video director Joe Marcantonio is another rapidly-emerging artist; barely 26 years old, he's already shot clips for some of the London's hottest new acts, including Jamie T, Larrikin Love, and Bobby Cook. His vibrant clip for "Right And Right Again" exposes the dangerous, hazy glamour of Sohodolls and their milieu. Marcantonio's camera twists in and out of focus; the corners of the frames blur, sharpen, and distort. He first shoots Maya in rich black and white - she sits, garters on, in a dressing room, and purrs at the camera through the gauzy filter. But by the time the song hits its hooky chorus, the Sohodolls are captured live in performance, and neon-bright beams of primary color stream over the shoulders of the band. Maya doesn't miss a beat, though - she keeps right on teasing the lens, beckoning seductively as the images slide into a red-hot blur.

These days, it seems like everybody is scoring big hits with songs about strippers: T-Pain, Kanye West, 50 Cent. But must you be raging with testosterone in order to pen an ode to voyeurism? Hardly. Leave it to the deliriously naughty Maya von Doll - lead singer and agent provocateur of the Sohodolls - to bring the girls in on the action. In "Stripper", the stunning London vocalist crashes the club and shows the boys how it's done, claiming the sexiest dancers as her own. "Hey, stripper, I want to be your mister", she coos, slipping some bills into that overstuffed g-string. "I have the right to pull the girls", she insists; it's a pout, a challenge, an anthem, a sexy statement of purpose.

American television producers have taken notice. Alexandra Patsavas, the music impresario for such notable shows as The OC and Grey's Anatomy, recently paired "Stripper" with an episode of Gossip Girl to electrifying effect. Although the band has become a mainstay on the British alternative charts, this was, for most stateside music fans, a first exposure to Sohodolls's music. The upcoming U.S. release of Ribbed Music For A Numb Generation is likely to familiarize American audiences with Maya von Doll and her bandmates. Rarely does an electropop band make music so immediate, so infectious, and so effortlessly provocative.

That is, in part, because it's the rare electropop band that rocks this hard. Like most Sohodolls songs, "Stripper" is built around a huge and irresistible guitar riff. The British quartet decorates its mix with machine-drums and spacy synthesizer textures, but the center of this track is its swaggering six-string. Maya von Doll's performance is simultaneously authoritative and alluring (or perhaps it's so alluring because of her command); her portrayal of a sexual adventurer in the decadent dens of London is wholly convincing, and surreptitiously exciting.

It helps that Maya von Doll is as gorgeous as she is. Many pop stars are beautiful, but the Sohodolls frontwoman is absolutely made for the camera - she's got a model's face, and a body suitable for a high-end... well, for a high-end stripper. Should she ever take to the pole in public, it's safe to say she'd come away with a thong-ful of cash. Tim Mattia (Alamos, Biffy Clyro) makes the Sohodolls frontwoman the focus of his titillating clip for "Stripper", although her androgynous bandmates make the most of their screen-time, too. They take the stage of an urban cabaret (to frame the clip, a neon sign flashes "pleasures of Soho") and perform their song to a rapt crowd of well-dressed rowdies with carnal appetites. Mattia flashes close-ups of Maya's made-up lips and shining teeth as she sneers into the microphone; it's aggressive, but also undeniably sexual. By the end of the performance, her dress comes off, her flawless shoulders flash under the stagelights, and only a thick strip of gaffer's tape protects her breasts from exposure. It's a testament to her dancing skill - and to her remarkable anatomy - that everything stays perfectly in place.

For those of you who are still too cold to dare to think about the advent of spring, here's a clip that ought to help: a May day condensed into three-minute form by Grammy-nominated director Israel Anthem and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. Never mind that SSLYBY hardly ever plays conventionally "happy" songs: their melodies are radiant enough to brighten up any cloudy afternoon. That tension between wistful, breezy pop melodies and often-melancholy subject matter is one that will be familiar to bands such as The Shins and Rogue Wave. It made Broom, their debut, one of 2006's most welcome surprises - and it's made Pershing, the long-awaited followup, among the underground's most anticipated albums.

Pershing will be out next month, and fans of lovelorn indiepop are already counting the days. While we're waiting, we can all dance to "Think I Wanna Die" - a perfect example of the band's ability to pair the wicked with the sweet. The lead single is a razor-sharp dagger in a jewel-encrusted sheath: the guitars jangle, the drums rattle and bounce, and the members of Somebody Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin chant, coo, and harmonize about the unbearable pain of breakups, miscommunication, and unrequited love. Simultaneously aching and inspiring, "Think I Wanna Die" is about as gorgeous as romantic disillusionment is ever going to get. All heartbreak should sound - and feel - so good. And maybe that's why we love bands like SSLYBY so much: they make the universal experience of relationship trouble seem a little warmer and a little friendlier, and therefore a little easier to bear.

Then again, few of us have ever been dumped as decisively - or as violently - as are the boys of SSLYBY in the clip for "Think I Wanna Die". On the other hand, few of us are lucky enough to date the three frontwomen of Eisley (even on film!), so perhaps on balance, they're even. Israel Anthem, who was nominated for a Grammy award for his video work with Mute Math, teases out the playful subtext of SSLYBY's fatalistic narrative. He pairs an Eisley girl with each member of Somebody Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, and sets the couples loose on a bright spring morning. It's breakfast, and each musician eats from a cereal bowl: one at a kitchen table, one on a swing in the park, and one (incredibly) while riding a bicycle down a country road. The girls - all flirty at first - make romantic overtures toward their boyfriends. But they're eating, or pedaling, or swinging, and, in any event, otherwise engaged. Predictably, the girlfriends become irate, and each takes extreme action. Meanwhile, back in the studio, the members of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin are feeling uncharacteristically aggressive, too, but they're taking it out on their instruments. As the girls slap the musicians' faces and put arrows through their hearts, the guys trash their guitars, swing cymbal stands, and hit the floor with abandon. The girls, Anthem suggests, "torture" the guys, and the guys pour it all into their music.

New York City based jazz singer & songwriter who released her first major CD Red Soil In My Eyes with the hit single Ingele in 2007. Somi was born on June 6, 1976 in Champaign, Illinois and is of Rwandan and Ugandan descent. While Red Soil In My Eyes was her first internationally-distributed effort, Somi has an earlier independent release entitled Eternal Motive (2003) that was once largely-out-of print, but was re-issued in 2008 for digital distribution.